A speedy piece of publishing

Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend, 1932-2011
David Bret
Mainstream Publishing - $39.99Publication this Friday - 15 April, 2011

At 1.28 a.m. on Wednesday, 23 March 2011, just three weeks after celebrating her 79th birthday, the biggest star Hollywood has ever known died. The tributes and eulogies to Elizabeth Taylor were legion. A weeping Elton John said, ‘We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being.’

In Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend, 1932–2011, acclaimed biographer David Bret has written a revealing, incisive and definitive life story of the most controversial cinematic icon since Mae West. While never yielding in his admiration and respect, Bret has stripped away the veneer to portray the star as she really was: sometimes arrogant, attention-seeking, avaricious, reckless, monstrous towards her peers, generous, even foolish at times but, above all, through the tumultuous relationships and the personal mayhem, a survivor.

Elizabeth Taylor was the very last of the Hollywood greats. As David Bret writes, ‘Most of her contemporaries – Garbo, Streisand and Dietrich excepted – were compelled to walk in the shadow of her sun. Of today’s stars, not one may be deemed worthy of stepping even within a mile of that shadow'.

It seems quite remarkable that 19 days after her death I have been able to read a biography of the great lady. I guess David Bret had written all but the epilogue before she died but nevertheless it is a remarkable feat to have the book on sale in bookstores on the other side of the world three weeks after her death.
There is a thorough index and an interesting appendix which lists all the films Elizabeth Taylor appeared in, along with the producer and the other actors for each film. 16 pages of photograps too, most of which I hadn't seen before.

Publication 15 April, 2011, distributed in NZ by Random House.